All Ends
by Yasmyn Yaslanna
Summary: From Fifth year onwards. How the Marauders, as a group, developed -- and disintegrated. Sirius POV, light marauderslash. Previously posted on LJ.


Standard disclaimers apply.

--

At fourteen, Sirius Black knew a lot more about family than one might have given him credit for. Particularly, well. Considering.

Relatives -- those were the ones you were stuck with, the ones that dragged you down by virtue of blood. Family was something you created. They were your people, your pack. _**Period.**_

Fifth year _made_ them.

Of course they'd been the Marauders before then. They'd accepted Remus's – _quirks_ -- before then. It was categorised with the other things: Peter's clumsy, desperate attempts to keep up with them academically. James's inability to keep his head down and his mouth shut. That sort of thing.

But at the end of all things, it was Remus who united them. Fifth year -- the year when actual understanding replaced trust and acceptance -- it made them family. A pack. Something strong. Something protective and loyal; fierce and tenacious and so together that they left the metaphor of the well-oiled machine blinking in the dust: they were _magic._

--

Sirius had -- well, he'd _known_ what the spell would do to him. Sort of.

"It's different," said Remus. "You don't know what -- Listen. You're going to ... _feel_ it. All the time," he tried to explain.

James shrugged. Sirius cracked a yawn. "Is that bad?" Peter asked.

He had known. Remus _told_ them. Sirius Black, a very human fourth year, would become... something else. Not wholly. Just a bit. And not in a bad way, he thought.

Remus looked between the three of them, consternation plain in the determined set of his brows. It was uncommon enough for him to press the issue with them. "It's not something you can do once a month and shrug off," he said.

"We know that," James rolled his eyes. "We've read the books, too, you know."

_Predator,_ he'd thought. Something dark and swift that would never feel the cold. Something he'd turned into for his family; a pack animal, surely.

"But you haven't --"

"It'll be fine," James assured him, waving away his protests. "This is voluntary, anyway," he pointed out. "Won't be nearly as bad as yours, you know."

Remus swallowed his arguments. He paused. Hesitated. "Um."

"Yes?" Sirius drew the word out into long, teasing syllables. James cut a warm, dark eyed glance his way from the couch.

"I -- thanks."

There was silence, not quite the requisite minute, but long enough to acknowledge the word's cost. Then James threw a balled-up scarf at him, and their dormitory returned more or less to normal. As normal as it ever got, anyway.

The transformation itself was effortless. The anxious excitement of something completely illicit. Something they weren't supposed to be able to accomplish. (Who wrote those rules, anyway, and what did they know about _them?_)

He changed into the dog. Padfoot. Peter clapped. James wolf-whistled. Remus smiled, just a bit, and waited.

He'd thought it would be like slipping on some stiff new jeans. You knew they were there. They felt different. It was a bit weird until they stretched into the proper shape. But underneath, he would still be himself.

It wasn't... painful, exactly. Physically.

It was more like he'd ripped his skin off and replaced it with the denim. There wasn't enough room in his head for more than one emotion at a time, so he just sat there in shock.

His vision slanted oddly, unfocused, leached of all but the most basic colour: Black. White. Red, maybe. Definitely shades of grey. He closed his eyes, because he couldn't look through them properly anyway, and discovered that he could hear James's heart beat. He could smell the scared, angry thing inside Remus, itching to get out and run and run and make something bleed.

He had _paws_.

As in, four of them.

He changed. Sirius Black, fourth year student, grinned. "Wow."

--

It was probably a good thing that the animals they changed into reflected their personalities to a large extent.

It was the little things, at first. A slight dulling in their colour perception, collectively. Peter moved faster, made himself smaller, looked around carefully before stepping into the dormitory room, as though they would bite. (To be fair, they had, once or twice.)

Sirius could hear a whispered conversation halfway across a corridor if he paid attention. He developed a strong incentive to sniff at people. To remember them. It seemed important, even though he knew he wasn't going to forget James's smirk. Or the way Remus would shut his teeth with a click and then glance toward the heavens when he made a truly Sirius-class stupid mistake.

But the animals bled into them nonetheless. Animal, human: they were never truly one or the other any more.

They used to lay, on someone's bed, or four bodies between two, just touching. Skin-to-skin, like a new litter of puppies. Cubs. Rats. Ratlings? Whatever. Just to touch.

He woke up one winter morning, laying on James's arm with Peter's leg flung over his knee and Remus at his side, practically catatonic from the stress of the moon. Eyes unopened -- he didn't need them, really; he knew who was who, where they were. He could measure their breathing -- he wondered, half-conscious, where their fur had all gone.

He wondered why he wasn't more afraid. Werewolves of Remus's flavour clung to the edges of human society for a reason. The same reason that the others were half-wild savages, even in human form. Humanity was the torch in the darkness.

Maybe it was a trade-off, he thought sleepily.

All in all, Sirius was only half-surprised when he woke up sweaty and aching with James's teeth on his neck sending tremors down his spine and Remus's legs entangled in his. Not that it happened, but that it was so ...normal.

He tangled his hands in somebody's hair and took his time getting their scents mingled and confused in the body-warm darkness before dawn.

It had been coming, he supposed.

Sirius didn't know how to get them all close enough to meld and never come apart, so he held on, rode it out and prayed.

--

By the time they'd graduated, James had proposed.

In the Great Hall. During Friday's dinner. (Lily had almost passed out.)

It was sort of a natural progression, Sirius thought, idling by the lake in those last days. James and Lily were inseparable, of course, but they liked her. She was nominally part of the pack, in a way, although she'd sure as hell never collapsed, half-naked, on top of him after an exhausting night of moonlight and racing. But she was – _James_ loved her to distraction. So she was family.

All of them were confused then, nostalgic and anxious that Hogwarts would never again be a home to them. School days at an end; the real world would suck them in. The war would suck them in.

But they'd _always_ have each other. And if, at the end of all things, the war...

He stared over the lake, watching the squid run through its morning constitutional, sliding through the water so sleek and effortless that it barely made a ripple. Dying for them would be easy.

At seventeen, Sirius Black understood family. _They_ were family. Sure, they were a damned mental kind of family, and they probably shouldn't be allowed to roam freely. But they were his. They were his people, his pack. _**Period.**_

**_--_**

Years later, Sirius Black knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he knew nothing. At the end of all things, he killed Lily and James Potter. (And Azkaban rang with his laughter.)

--

"Could I look at that newspaper, please?" Sirius Black asked the Minister. He was half-sane. A frightening man, fierce and tenacious, for who could stay half-sane in Azkaban?

Shaking with the strength of unhappy thoughts, the Minister handed over the Prophet.

"I miss doing the crossword," murmured Sirius. The paper felt strange under his hands, neither skin nor rock nor cold iron. He rubbed it between his fingers, so careful not to tear it.

He stared at the picture in that paper for a long, long time.

And then he went to find Peter.

--


End file.
